I stopped drawing. I took off my blindfold. Around me were more than a dozen sketches. Surprised by the time on the clock, I sat where I was and tried to make sense of what had happened. Usually, I worked for a few minutes. Ten at the most. But according to the Limoges timepiece, I had been working for almost two hours.
I extended and flexed my fingers. They were smudged with graphite and ached. I stood. Bent over, I let my back muscles stretch. When I returned to a standing position, I was a little dizzy.
From the sideboard, I poured water out of a crystal pitcher into a matching glass, which I took to the open window. I looked out into the gardens below. Gaspard was there, Pepin at his heels. The gardener was clipping deep blood-red roses.
Tipping the glass to my lips, I sipped the water. As I watched, the silver-haired man with the golden eyes looked up at the castle, toward me. Even though I doubted he could see me in the shadows, it appeared that he could. First a look of pleasure played around his lips, followed by a frown creasing his forehead.
I’d seen the same reaction from him at the cottage. As welcoming as he’d been, and despite the simpatico I’d felt from him, I had the distinct impression he wished I had never come.
A chilly wind blew in. I put the glass down and lowered the window. Halfway, it slammed shut, catching my forefinger. The pain was intense. My finger throbbed. Luckily, it was my left hand. In the bathroom, I ran the cold water and held my finger under the tap. Once it was numb, I shut off the water, dried my hand, and returned to the drawings, to inspect them again and see if any tiny details struck me as clues. I was always vaguely aware of what I was drawing as I worked, but upon scrutinizing the sketches after they were completed, I often discovered new elements that in the moment hadn’t reached my consciousness.
Searching through my afternoon’s work, I found what looked like Arabic writing on the stones in the dungeon. What appeared to be a skull in the dust in the room behind the oven. And odd markings I couldn’t decipher at all on the spines of the books in the library. But it wasn’t until I showed the sketches to Madame Calvé later that I noted the most curious thing of all.
We were huddled over a card table in the coziest room in the castle. A sitting room decorated in cabbage roses and green-leaf chintz. The walls, painted a faint blush color, were covered with botanical prints. Topiaries in the shapes of robins sat in bronze planters. Birdcages hung from each window, inside them parakeets of exotic purples and greens.
“I recognize some of these rooms,” Madame Calvé said as she pored over my sketches. “But not these.” She’d pulled out three sketches and separated them from the rest. “And not this hiding place in the library.” She shook her head. “I thought by now I’d been over every inch of the chateau and feared the Book of Abraham was missing. When I saw you, I had a hunch and am so glad I paid it heed. Because it wasn’t really a hunch, was it? The spirit world works in wonderfully original ways. It wasn’t a coincidence that I read about the gallery opening. I’m supposed to find the book. I was urged to go down to Cannes. The spirits put you in my path, and now you are going to lead me to the most important esoteric artifact discovery in the last three hundred years.”
She reached out and patted my hand, and I thought I saw tears glisten in her eyes.
“Let me arrange for some help, and we’ll go find these spaces. I need you with me, in case you recognize something you saw but didn’t sketch.”
I was going to argue that we’d come so I could draw the castle’s secrets, not actually help her hunt for the book. But before the words came out, Madame Calvé pointed to one of the drawings. The cavern with the odd-shaped stones.
“Look at this wall.”
“I don’t see anything unusual. It’s just rocks, Madame.”
La Diva turned to me. Her eyebrows rose in amazement. “You don’t see it?”
I shook my head.
“There’s a shadow of a figure here.”
I stared at the area she’d indicated. When I’d been seeing it from behind the blindfold, there had been nothing there but uneven, unremarkable stones. I was certain of it. But now, studying from a distance, it appeared I had shaded in a woman’s shadow. And she looked very much like me.
Chapter 30
The next morning, Wednesday, I came down to breakfast to learn that Madame Calvé had enlisted help and we’d spend the day searching for the places I’d drawn. That gave us two days and nights left to find the treasure and leave before Madame’s party guests descended on her.
Over croissants and café crème, she discussed her plans for the day, saying we should start in the library because that would require the least amount of destruction.
“Gaspard Le’Malf is on his way over. He’s our groundskeeper. His family has been taking care of the castle for centuries, and he’s more knowledgeable about this building and the land it sits on than anyone,” she explained. “And he’s strong. Between him and you, Sebastian, we’ll be able to move anything in our way.”
“I met Gaspard yesterday,” I said, and told La Diva about my getting lost in the forest, finding his house, and meeting his son.
Madame shook her head. “Sophie was wonderful. She was a historian. They’d met when she was doing research on the area.”
“How did she die?” I asked.
“Her car skidded in a rainstorm. They didn’t find her for two days. It was so tragic for Gaspard and his little boy. He’s hired a wonderful nursemaid, but she can’t replace the child’s mother.”
Gaspard arrived just as we were finishing breakfast. Madame introduced him to Sebastian.
“And Delphine tells me you met yesterday,” La Diva said.
“Yes,” Gaspard said, and turned to me. “It’s nice to see you again. So your drawings proved fruitful?”
Did I detect sarcasm? I wasn’t certain, but I sensed that same tug-of-war of emotions from him that I’d felt the day before. He wanted to talk to me, draw me in, discuss something with me, and yet at the same time, he wished that I wasn’t there, that I wasn’t doing this.
“Gaspard, do you want a café before we go to work?”
“No, but thank you, Madame.” He was respectful but not deferential like an employee would have been.
“All right, then.” She took a deep breath, as if she were preparing for a performance. “Time to begin,” Madame said, “with the library.”
We followed her into the beautifully appointed room with its floor-to-ceiling carved wooden shelves. Somewhere among them, I’d seen a mysterious segment that opened like a door. There were more than a dozen partitions in the paneled room, and we each took a section.
“Of all the rooms in the house, this one was in the best shape when I moved in,” Madame told us. “Many of these books were here, left behind. We searched through them, of course, but never took the room apart. A secret door in a library is such an obvious plot device. I should have guessed, what with all the opera I’ve performed.”
“Sometimes the most obvious solutions are the right ones,” Gaspard said.
“Nonetheless, I never thought of it. If the book is here, I’ll feel quite ridiculous.”